Wiredniko's Journal - Adventures of the Newbie

Well I started thinking if I am getting 29% CTR to my offer page....maybe its my offer that is having issues....in any case while I am building my new LP might as well have something running.

So I am going to link it to another offer.

In the meantime I updated my lowest CTR ad copy to something more similar to my higher CTR one.

Updated some of my max CPC values, I want to get some higher positions. Still don't know my way around bidding.

Update my link to the new offer and restarted my campaign.

Prosper is still being a bitch so I still do not know which LP is working, but I went with my hunch and update the title of the LP I did not like.

Updated the way I had my subid for prosper202...I hope that might fix prosper...if not...well it ain't working now.

Well with that down time to work on my new LP idea...if it ends up being that it was the offer I can just split test the new LP idea...if it was my LP it will not hurt to have a totally new style for my LP.

...oh my god I am an idiot. I knew this prosper issue was user error. I kept playing around with generating links when I initially did not have my subid inserted correctly....and yeah that changes the tracking.....gah

I might as well update all my landing page links once and have the final result. I am convinced this is it. I will know for sure tomorrow.

Well now my prosper is all re-setup for all my ads and to keep track of keywords.

Alright now I can work on the new LP of doom. Still looking for a stupid theme. Finally found two, I will have to hack them to shit to make them work right and add some PHP generated stuff, but I have the backbone.

Registering new domain, for this experiment...technically experiment v2.5 I will not make multiple posts for SEO purposes, this will just be a pure PPC LP. Btw namecheap for September has a new coupon code "back2reality"

Domain and DNS all setup. Updating my hostgator account to grab the new domain. I am now up..well the DNS is still updating but I can do my thing.

I am getting faster at setting things up. I can tell the difference.

Wordpress installed and updated to current version. Theme FTPed and enabled. Bare bones plugins added and configured.

Going to sleep. I hope my new offer works...if it does not I will just pause it tomorrow night and launch my new LP. Even though my new LP will take some time.
 


$0 sales...sigh

Pausing my campaign as I discussed in my last post. I will provide the end stats tomorrow right now they are a bit off. MSN seems to have a day lag for detail stats.

Well I cannot say I am happy about this. I wish I had a couple of buys at least.

Prosper not working has kept me blind about some stats...but that is not what caused this to fail. Obviously trying the new offer did not change anything, as I expected its something about my LP that just did not convert right.

The Ad Copy to final offer CTR is still pretty high in my opinion but if your CTR is 100% and your ROI is 0% you are doing it wrong.

I would lie if I said I am not bummed about it. So the question becomes do I create the LP that I think it will work and try again? Do I give up and try an email/zip submit because they seem simpler?
 
I am not giving up yo.

Ryan Eagle quote I came across the other day "I don’t read. I learn by losing money - like I said, experience is the best way to become profitable."
 
Thanks for keeping this thread updated. When I finally find time to have a go at marketing, the first thing I'm going to do is come back and read it again, for a dose of reality.

I'm interested to know, do you have enough money to be able to continue testing this campaign? What's the maximum you would throw at the campaign before terminating it? Suppose you have four failed campaigns before finding a successful one; do you have enough budget to cope with that?

I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but doesn't 30% CTR from LP to offer seem too high for an unoptimised campaign? If your AM has told you that other marketers are managing to shift this product OK, could it be that your Ads are attracting people who are in 'research mode' instead of 'the buyers'?

Cheers
 
hahaha^ Chianti, i love that sig dude, some silly ass shit!!!! almost feel compelled to steal it LOLOL!

But wiredniko...dont be bummed dude, its a learning process, all the money u lost, u regained back in some sick ass knowledge and experience, im going thru the same shit, u know this!

I think everyone whos reading ur journal will agree that ur 1000x further to being successful than some newbie reading this and taking notes in his lil handy dandy affiliate marketing manual he's putting together for FUTURE use :)

Failure is the tuition you pay for success bro
 
Now that a day has pass my MSN data is up to date so I can post the final conclusions.

  • Spend $397.23
  • Sales $0
  • Clicks 320
  • Impressions 11,939
  • CTR % 2.68
  • Avg Position 3.83
  • Avg CPC $1.24
  • Highest Keyword CTR 23.08% (9 out of 39..I ignored 1 and 2 hit wonders)
  • Highest Ad Copy CTR 3.23%
  • Offer hits: 109...probably 15 of them are my tests so 94
  • Ad Copy to Offer CTR (through my LP) 29.375%

Unfortunately prosper was fubared so I cannot tell which keywords actually pushed people to the offer or my CTR for my two LPs, its like I am missing the middle.

So obviously my campaign failed. One of the things I have realized, and I need to practice more is learning from my mistakes. It seems that most successful people do this, reading "How We Decide" also confirmed my idea, that experts become experts by analyzing their mistakes.

Mistake analysis:
  • Test and ensure prosper202 is tracking right BEFORE I go public (aka start sending traffic)
  • Split testing Ad Copies works well, I raised my CTR by 1.3% in a couple of days. It would have worked on the LP level as well, if I prosper was tracking it...
  • Spending $100 a day on a campaign is too high, I did not need to spend $400, I knew it was not working at $200. Instead I am going to spend less money per day, and still try to test something out for five days. I think my new limit is going to be the offer money per day (except if its an email submit or something) that way I am testing $offer x 5
  • Get a second opinion on LPs and Ad Copies..what I think is cool might actually be silly
  • Split test, split test, split test
  • Keyword bidding...CPR increases for higher positions, its obvious but now its verified
  • Max CPC can drain the hell out of you quick
  • Avoid keyword free when you are asking people to pay, most of my clicks where long tail keywords with the word free...yeah its cool that I got volume but if it did not convert its useless or I do not know how to monetize it
  • Be more creative with keywords, hitting obvious keywords ends up costing too much money due to competition
  • Do more research for how others are advertising similar offers
  • Talk to my AM more, he is there to help
  • Having someone you trust to bounce ideas with is tremendous help, not to mention it inspires you to work harder...so thanks Val
  • Keep track of my own test hits, it makes data tracking harder when I have to estimate how many of those hits are mine
  • Think about what time to display my ads. I noticed that everyday I would run out on my budget by around 5ish...maybe next time I need to test during prime time hours....perhaps this is the wrong approach...who knows
  • I need to work on my sales technique. It appears I have kind of the right idea on the Ad Copy level, but obviously my LP even though it pushed traffic it did not monetize it. So I need to sell it better. I should do more research on this.
  • Its better to start my campaign on a Friday or Thursday, that way I have the weekend to work on things if need be instead of trying to make big changes during the week

That is all I can think of for now.

Time to work on my new LP idea. I will split test between my idea and what emp suggested, making an LP similar to the offer page. I will use the same ad copies, well actually my top performing ad copy and a variation of it.

Keyword wise I am taking a totally different approach so I will pretty much have to start from scratch. Hopefully I will get done by Sunday...then do I apply lessons learned and launch my campaign this Thursday or start immediately?

Well time will tell, since I might or might not be ready with my two LPs anyway.

Back to work for me!
 
Officially starting experiment v2.5...why 2.5? Because I am using the same offer and Ad Copies but a totally different landing page approach.

Main project here is to hack the hell out of my landing page. I need to add GeoIP tracking, date manipulation....and then actually write the content.

Updated header.php and footer.php file removing non needed items, links to theme creator, search etc...

Modified my menu bar, added a bunch more pages titles, changed CSS for menu bar to cover the width of the page.

Working on LP top of the page logo..this always takes a while. Made one...looks really amateur to me. Hmm...Got a second opinion....it apparently looks good. Who would have thought.

Had to figure out how to super impose dynamic text on top of a picture...CSS came to the rescue. Now I can dynamically change text based on who visits and when.

...I just realized I am working against myself with this damn wordpress theme. I wanted to use it for the structure, but why didn't I just decide to go pure HTML. I am even modifying most of the CSS. I think I should remove wordpress and make a pure HTML / CSS based page.

....thinking about it.

Fuck it...going pure HTML. Deleting my wordpress. Keeping a backup just in case.

Starting over with HTML.

Decided to go a bit wider, modified my banner image...I think I am putting too many details here and perhaps boring the ppl reading this...so I will be a bit less specific.
 
Working on LP top of the page logo..this always takes a while. Made one...looks really amateur to me. Hmm...Got a second opinion....it apparently looks good. Who would have thought.
Click to expand...

Being 100% behind your own product is the only way to go
 
Great information! Useful for people who are in need of growing their general beginner experience in PPC.
 
wiredniko said:
Fuck it...going pure HTML. Deleting my wordpress. Keeping a backup just in case.

Starting over with HTML.

Decided to go a bit wider, modified my banner image...I think I am putting too many details here and perhaps boring the ppl reading this...so I will be a bit less specific.
Click to expand...

Wordpress has been having a shit ton of little bugs since 3.01 Having to run around fixing shit has been eating into my time and how efficient I am. I'm also thinking of just going pure HTML/CSS. Would probably save me time and be simpler.
 
Sunday, here we go again.

Working on HTML stuff.

Created a fake menu bar where all the links are send to # but makes it look more legit. Used the same color scheme as the offer page.

Made a "as seen on TV" banner for site authority...also using the same colors as the offer page.

My dynamic text is positioning right, but its not dynamic yet. I figure I will work on PHP after my site infrastructure is done.

Header and subheader are complete. I will be adding some dynamic text on my header.

Added dynamic date...its always today's date :)

Code: 
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"> 
<!--
// Array of day names
var dayNames = new Array("Sunday","Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday","Saturday");
var monthNames = new Array("January","February","March","April","May","June","July","August","September","October","November","December");
var dt = new Date();
var y  = dt.getYear();
			 
// Y2K compliant
if (y < 1000) y +=1900;
			 
document.write(dayNames[dt.getDay()] + ", " + monthNames[dt.getMonth()] + " " + dt.getDate() + ", " + y);
// -->
</script>

So if today is Sunday, 9/12/10 it will display "Sunday, September 12, 2010". If you a javascript newb but want to change the look, just update document.write...see the things between the quotes? ", " that what you get to change. Also for the Europeans you probably want Date first then Month.

Now you can't say I never gave you nothing. :xmas-smiley-016:

Sigh I keep running in circles with my design. Stuck with some CSS shit, I can't surround the video with the proper border...its probably something simple...but I can't figure it out.

My page is about 20% done...infrastructure wise about 40%
 
stick2Herbs said:
Wordpress has been having a shit ton of little bugs since 3.01 Having to run around fixing shit has been eating into my time and how efficient I am. I'm also thinking of just going pure HTML/CSS. Would probably save me time and be simpler.
Click to expand...

Yeah...I am starting to realize that for LPs, HTML/CSS is faster.

For SEO stuff wordpress is the way to go.

So they both have strengths...its just with wordpress you end up fighting against you theme to make things work. Maybe if I paid for a professional theme I would feel differently but for now...HTML/CSS is the way to go.

Too bad I am not as good as I would like with CSS.
 
Page is moving along...

OMG....I just made something work so well...its PIMP! Like...I am impressed by my own skills. I have ingrained videos so well with my LP they feel like they are part of the site....I am blown away.

I have been reading a lot about copy writing, came across something awesome in a sales page (best way to read copy writing in my opinion)

The more action you take, the more money you'll make

...and this is why last week I worked close to 80 hours.

Speaking of which working on my copy writing stuff.

Main title, always the hardest.

Optimizing my javascript, making a function for my dates, since I keep doing the same thing. Dusting up my javascript skills. Who just optimized his page to load much faster? It was me.

Upgraded getDate function and how to call it for the uber newbs. Notes: put the function in the HEAD section. Then call it anywhere in your page.

Code: 
<head>
		<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"> 
			<!--
			// Array of day names
			var dayNames = new Array("Sunday","Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday","Saturday");
		 
			var monthNames = new Array("January","February","March","April","May","June","July","August","September","October","November","December");
			var dt = new Date();
			var y  = dt.getYear();
		 
			// Y2K compliant
			if (y < 2000) y +=1900;
		
			var isToday = getDate();
			
			function getDate()
			{	 
				var dateString = dayNames[dt.getDay()] + ", " + monthNames[dt.getMonth()] + " " + dt.getDate() + ", " + y;
				return dateString;
			}
			//-->
		</script>
	</head> 

<body>
What date is it?<br />
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">document.write(isToday);</script><br />

</body>

My cut and paste came out kind of weird but...whatever. You can press delete yourself if you copy this.

Found a javascipt based GeoIp for free. MaxMind - GeoIP Javascript Web Service Much better than having to install a database and pull it with PHP. Of course the drawback is is Maxmind goes down...so does my GeoIP.

All the javascript stuff is complete. Tested it with a couple of people, City, State short descriptor and long works. So do my dates...but obviously I can check that.

Working on main article again. At least I have a pretty good title. 1st paragraph done, pretty good if I say so myself.

2nd paragraph done.

Calling it a night.
 
Pretty neat thread; subb'ing this, and will be reading the thread in its entirety soon. :D
 
You can probably distill your date javascript down to

<script>
document.write((new Date()).toLocaleDateString());
</script>

or thereabouts, and it automatically formats according to user agent locale.
 
Today is going to be a short day, might as well make the most of it.

Music bumping, Rusko...dubstep its in my blood

anyway

CSS is being a bitch...my obvious weak point. Sometimes things break font wise and I have no idea why...meh its a learning process I guess. This would have been avoided if I used a wordpress theme, but my site looks so much better for manually creating it.

Done with my main LP article.

Adding some testimonials and images....and a call to action...and a limited time offer. Covering all my basis here.

Javascript...adding one extra day for the time offer....apparently its not as simple as I thought, I either get the current date or 10 days ago. :(

ooops forgot to post this yesterday
 
Time to work on Javascript again. Stupid date forwarding.

Finally figured it out, stupid variable name being misspelled and affecting my array.

Got accepted in EWA....sweetness.

Finished up my testimonials highlighting my landing page points.

Added another image...made my video autoplay to get the right feel for my page...even though I hate autoplay...maybe I should split test that.

Added some testimonial images for more social proof.

Added even more testimonials...I have two types, the comment type and the quote type.

My landing page looks busy but the call to action is still there. I have two of them, along with links on pictures etc. Two of them above the fold and one further down right above the testimonials.

Overall my page looks very pro.

ToDo
- Legal disclaimer
- Get prosper202 link for my offer
- Link legal disclaimer of offer from my page for added legal talk
- generate keywords, even though I have a very good idea in my head
- confirm prosper202 is working
- create 2 ad copies
- split test my LP...not sure what I should test first...as of yet
- proof read my site
- fix geocity font issue by my comment testimonials
- launch campaign
- get money, get paid
 
Still going strong yo.

Check out some biz op landing pages I found....two of them get 120K hits a month....that's some OG traffic. I think my landing page is better. This might be it ladies and gents.

Talked to Alex my new EWA manager. Initial thoughts, EWA is a pimp network, I like the atmosphere over there. Alex seems to be helpful, I learned a bunch of things from him.

Oh and the payouts....they are sweet, I bet at certain situation that difference is what makes a campaign profitable or fail.

Listening to some gangsta rap and rocking it.

Working on my disclaimer. Disclaimer done, copyrighted also added.

Setting up prosper202. Talking to Alex I got some tips, I hope it goes much smoother than last time. I know one thing for sure if this does not work I will not launch my campaign

Working on keywords, as always Free Keyword Phrase List Generator makes life easy...if you know the words you want to target. Went with phrase and exact having learned my lesson from my previous try.

Site spell checked. Caught about 6 mistakes. Oops
 
Finishing up my keywords.

Keyword list all done...I was creative with my keywords. Curious to see how my CPC will look.

Created two ad copies. Added them both on MSN and Prosper202. One of them is my top performing Ad Copy for BizOp v1.0 and a new one that I want to test out.

9,122 keywords, some of them are really low volume...I hope I am going the right route. If I do not get enough hits I will broaden my keywords to some more competitive ones.

max CPC set to $1.50.

MSN is all setup.

Now I need to change my 2nd lander...so I can split test something...hmm. I am so happy with my page this is actually hard but I am not falling for that. There is always room for improvement. I figured it out, I will remove the Shipping and Handling fee mention in my call to action.

Would them knowing there is a fee make them go for it more or less? I guess that's a pretty good test.

Tested prosper...all clicks got recorded including my CTR. I was right, it was the way I generated my stupid links.

EWA recorded my hit as well.

Even my blank keyword showed up.

6 test clicks. I am writing this down so I do not forget last time and have to estimate skewing my stats.

Having a last look over for my page. Ah crap that's what I forgot, by changing my offer I forgot to update my graphics for brand recognition.

Ladies and gents....experiment #2.5 commencing.

Activating MSN campaign
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Get money, get paid!
 
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